RESEARCH

ADVOCACY

Food Security and Nutrition Surveillance-NNS (FSNS-NNS)

OverviewThe government of Bangladesh, development partners and other stakeholders recognised the urgent need for the continuation of nutritional surveillance in Bangladesh. As the James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University (JPGSPH) had prior experience and capability in conducting a national nutrition surveillance project, National Nutrition Services (NNS)/Institute of Public Health Nutrition (IPHN) entered into an agreement with the School to continue the food security and nutrition surveillance from April 2015 - February 2016, with funding from funded IPHN, DGHS, MoHFW.

The primary objective of the FSNS-NNS project is to track the food security and nutritional situation of seven divisions and Dhaka slums in Bangladesh.

ProjectThe overall objective of the project is to institutionalise nutritional surveillance into a national framework under the aegis of the National Nutrition Services. During the course of the project, JPGSPH will manage the surveillance system along with training and quality control assurance of the collected data. As per the proposed methodology, the surveillance data will provide national and divisional representative with estimates of the households on selected health and nutritional indicators. A technical advisory group was formed by MoHFW involving representatives from allied ministries (BBS, Ministry of Planning, Ministry of Food etc), GO (BMRC) and INGOs (Helen Keller International, icddr,b, Food and Agriculture Organization etc.) to finalise the methodology, indicators and other technical issues. Government data collectors were involved in the surveillance as part of the institutionalisation process.